big thread with lots of info so im gonna copy pasta some stuff
The Zodiac Killer was a serial killer who operated in Northern California in the late 1960s. The Zodiac killer's identity remains unknown. The Zodiac killer coined the name "Zodiac" in a series of taunting letters sent to the local Bay Area press. These letters included four cryptograms (or ciphers), three of which have yet to be solved
the victims
Confirmed victims
Although the Zodiac claimed 37 murders in letters to newspapers, investigators agree on only seven confirmed victims, two of whom survived. They are:
* David Arthur Faraday, 17, and Betty Lou Jensen, 16: shot and killed on December 20, 1968, on Lake Herman Road, within the city limits of Benicia.
* Michael Renault Mageau, 19, and Darlene Elizabeth Ferrin, 22: shot on July 4, 1969, in the parking lot of Blue Rock Springs Park in Vallejo. While Mageau survived the attack, Ferrin was pronounced dead-on-arrival at Kaiser Foundation Hospital.
* Bryan Calvin Hartnell, 20, and Cecelia Ann Shepard, 22: stabbed on September 27, 1969 at Lake Berryessa in Napa County. Hartnell survived six stab wounds to the back, but Shepard died as a result of her injuries on September 29, 1969.
* Paul Lee Stine, 29: shot and killed on October 11, 1969, in the Presidio Heights neighborhood in San Francisco.
Suspected victims
The following murder victims are suspected to be victims of Zodiac, though none have been confirmed:
*Robert Domingos, 18, and Linda Edwards, 17: shot and killed on June 4, 1963, on a beach near Lompoc. Edwards and Domingos were identified as possible Zodiac victims because of specific similarities between their attack and the Zodiac's attack at Lake Berryessa six years later.
* Cheri Jo Bates, 18: stabbed to death and nearly decapitated on October 30, 1966, at Riverside City College in Riverside. Bates' possible connection to the Zodiac only appeared four years after her murder when San Francisco Chronicle reporter Paul Avery received a tip regarding similarities between the Zodiac killings and the circumstances surrounding Bates' death.
* Donna Lass, 25: last seen September 6, 1970, in State-line, Nevada. A postcard with an advertisement from Forest Pines condominiums (near Incline Village at Lake Tahoe) pasted on the back was received at the Chronicle on 22 March 1971, and has been interpreted as the Zodiac claiming Lass' disappearance as a victim. No evidence has been uncovered to definitively connect Donna Lass' disappearance with the Zodiac Killer.
There is also a suspected third escapee from the Zodiac Killer:
* Kathleen Johns, 22: allegedly abducted on March 22, 1970, on Highway 132 near I-580, in an area west of Modesto. Johns escaped from the car of a man who drove her, and her infant daughter, around in the area between Stockton and Patterson for approximately three hours.
the letters
the "zodiac" sent letters to the Vallejo Times-Herald, San Francisco Chronicle,San Francisco Examiner
the first letter in its entirety NOTE: this had to be ciphered and as of yet the last 18 letters have yet to be finished
[img]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f8/Zodiac_cipher.png[/img]
On August 7, 1969, another letter was received at the San Francisco Examiner with the salutation "Dear Editor This is the Zodiac speaking". This was the first time the killer had used this name for himself. The letter was a response to Chief Stiltz's request for more details to prove he had killed Faraday, Jensen and Ferrin. In it, the Zodiac included details about the murders which had not been released to the public as well as a message to the police that when they cracked his code "they will have me".
On August 8, 1969, Donald and Bettye Harden of Salinas, California, cracked the 408-symbol cryptogram. It contained a misspelled message in which the killer claimed to be collecting slaves for the afterlife. No name appears in the decoded text, and the killer said that he would not give away his identity because it would slow down or stop his slave collection.
On October 14, 1969, the Chronicle received another letter from the Zodiac, this time containing a swatch of Paul Stine's shirt tail as proof he was the killer; it also included a threat about killing schoolchildren by shooting the front tire of a school bus and then "picking off the kiddies" as they evacuated.
At 2:00 p.m. on October 20, 1969, someone claiming to be the Zodiac called Oakland PD demanding that one of two prominent lawyers, F. Lee Bailey or Melvin Belli, appear on Jim Dunbar's television talk show in the morning. Bailey was not available, but Belli did appear on the show. Dunbar appealed to the viewers to keep the lines open, and eventually, someone claiming to be the Zodiac called several times and said his name was "Sam." Belli agreed to meet with him in Daly City, but the suspect never showed up.
On November 8, 1969, the Zodiac mailed a card with another cryptogram consisting of 340 characters.
On November 9, 1969, the Zodiac mailed a seven-page letter in which he claimed that two policemen stopped and actually spoke with him three minutes after he shot Stine. Excerpts from the letter were published in the Chronicle on November 12 including the Zodiac's claim; that same day, Don Fouke wrote a memo explaining what had happened that night. The 340-character cipher has never been decoded. Numerous possible "solutions" have been suggested, but none can be claimed as definitive.
On December 20, 1969, exactly one year after the murders of David Faraday and Betty Lou Jensen, the Zodiac mailed a letter to Belli, including another swatch of Stine's shirt; the Zodiac claimed he wanted Belli to help him.
The Zodiac continued to communicate with authorities for the remainder of 1970 via letters and greeting cards to the press. In a letter postmarked April 20, 1970, the Zodiac wrote, "My name is _____", followed by a 13-character cipher.The Zodiac went on to state that he was not responsible for the recent bombing of a police station in San Francisco (referring to the February 18, 1970, death of Sgt. Brian McDonnell two days after the bombing at Park Station in Golden Gate Park) but added "there is more glory to killing a cop than a cid [sic] because a cop can shoot back." The letter included a diagram of a bomb the Zodiac claimed he would use to blow up a school bus. At the bottom of the diagram, he wrote:[img]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8c/Zodiac-logo_crop.jpg[/img] = 10, SFPD = 0".
Zodiac sent a greeting card postmarked 28 April 1970, to the Chronicle. Written on the card was, "I hope you enjoy yourselves when I have my BLAST", followed by the Zodiac's cross circle signature. On the back of the card, the Zodiac threatened to use his bus bomb soon unless the newspaper published the full details he wrote. He also wanted to start seeing people wearing "some nice Zodiac butons [sic]".
In a letter postmarked June 26, 1970, the Zodiac stated he was upset that he did not see people wearing Zodiac buttons. He wrote, "I shot a man sitting in a parked car with a .38." The Zodiac was possibly referring to the murder of Sgt. Richard Radetich, a week earlier, on 19 June. At 05:25, Radetich was writing a parking ticket in his squad car when an assailant shot him in the head with a .38-caliber pistol. Radetich died 15 hours later. SFPD denies the Zodiac was involved in this murder; it remains unsolved.
Included with the letter was a Phillips 66 map of the San Francisco Bay Area. On the image of Mount Diablo, the Zodiac had drawn a crossed-circle similar to the ones he had included in previous correspondence. At the top of the crossed circle, he placed a zero, and then a three, six, and a nine, so the annotation resembled a clock face. The accompanying instructions stated that the zero was "to be set to Mag. N." The letter also included a 32-letter cipher that the killer claimed would, in conjunction with the code, lead to the location of a bomb he had buried and set to go off in the autumn. The bomb was never located. The killer had signed the note with [img]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8c/Zodiac-logo_crop.jpg[/img] = 12, SFPD = 0."
In a letter to the Chronicle postmarked July 24, 1970, the Zodiac took credit for Kathleen Johns' abduction, four months after the incident.
In a July 26, 1970 letter, the Zodiac paraphrased a song from The Mikado, adding his own lyrics about making a "little list" of the ways he planned to torture his "slaves" in "paradice." The letter was signed with a large, exaggerated cross circle symbol and a new score:
A final note at the bottom of the letter stated, "P.S. The Mt. Diablo code concerns Radians + # inches along the radians. In 1981, a close examination of the radian hint by Zodiac researcher Gareth Penn led to the discovery that a radian angle, when placed over the map per Zodiac's instructions, pointed to the locations of two Zodiac attacks.
On October 7, 1970, the Chronicle received a three-by-five inch card signed by the Zodiac with the Zodiac-logo drawn with blood. The card's message was formed by pasting words and letters from an edition of the Chronicle, and thirteen holes were punched across the card. Inspectors Armstrong and Toschi agreed it was "highly probable" the card came from the Zodiac.
On October 27, 1970, Chronicle reporter Paul Avery (who had been covering the Zodiac case) received a Halloween card signed with a letter 'Z' and the Zodiac's cross circle symbol. Handwritten on the card was the note "Peek-a-boo, you are doomed". The threat was taken seriously and received a front-page story on the Chronicle. Soon after receiving this letter, Avery received an anonymous letter alerting him to the similarities between the Zodiac's activities and the unsolved murder of Cheri Jo Bates, which had occurred four years earlier at the city college in Riverside in the Greater Los Angeles Area, more than 400 miles south of San Francisco. He reported his findings in the Chronicle on 16 November 1970.
After the "Pines" card, the Zodiac remained silent for nearly three years. The Chronicle then received a letter from the Zodiac, postmarked January 29, 1974, praising The Exorcist as "the best saterical comidy [sic]" that he had ever seen. The letter included a snippet of verse from The Mikado and an unusual symbol at the bottom that has remained unexplained by researchers. Zodiac concluded the letter with a new score, "Me = 37, SFPD = 0".
The Chronicle received another letter postmarked February 14, 1974, informing the editor that the initials for the Symbionese Liberation Army spelled out an Old Norse word meaning "kill". However, the handwriting was not authenticated as the Zodiac's.
A letter to the Chronicle, postmarked May 8, 1974, featured a complaint that the movie Badlands was "murder-glorification" and asked the paper to cut its advertisements. Signed only "A citizen", the handwriting, tone, and surface irony were all similar to earlier Zodiac communications.
The Chronicle subsequently received an anonymous letter postmarked July 8, 1974, complaining about one of its columnists, Marco Spinelli. The letter was signed "the Red Phantom (red with rage)". The Zodiac's authorship of this letter is debated.
A letter, dated April 24, 1978, was initially deemed authentic, but was declared a hoax less than three months later by three experts. In recent years, however, this letter has been deemed authentic. Dave Toschi, the SFPD homicide detective who had worked the case since the Stine murder, was thought to have forged the letter, because author Armistead Maupin believed the letter to be similar to "fan mail" he received in 1976 which he believed was authored by Toschi. While he admitted to writing the fan mail, Toschi denied forging the Zodiac letter and was eventually cleared of any charges. The authenticity of this letter remains unverified.
On March 3, 2007, an American Greetings Christmas card sent to the Chronicle, postmarked 1990 in Eureka had recently been discovered in their photo files by editorial assistant Daniel King. Inside the envelope, with the card, was a photocopy of two U.S. Postal keys on a magnet keychain. The handwriting on the envelope resembles Zodiac's print, but was declared inauthentic by forensic document examiner Lloyd Cunningham. Not all Zodiac experts, however, agree with Cunningham's analysis. There is no return address on the envelope nor is his crossed-circle signature to be found. The card itself is unmarked. The Chronicle turned over all the material to the Vallejo Police Department for further analysis.
the prime suspect: Arthur Leigh Allen
Arthur Leigh Allen was the prime suspect in the Zodiac murders and the only suspect served search warrants by police. He was never charged with any Zodiac-related crime, and his fingerprints did not match those left by the killer of taxi cab driver Paul Stine. In 1992, 23 years after the shootings, survivor Michael Mageau identified Allen as the man who shot him, from a photo lineup of 1968 driver's licenses. Allen, who suffered from diabetes, died in 1992 from kidney failure. In 2002, DNA samples taken from saliva on the Zodiac's stamps and envelopes were compared with the DNA of Arthur Leigh Allen, and the DNA of a former close friend of Allen named Don Cheney, who first identified Allen as the Zodiac Killer. Allen and Cheney were ruled out as the contributors of the DNA, though it cannot be stated definitively that it is DNA from the Zodiac on the envelopes.
A sketch of the Zodiac killer based on witness testimonies
[img]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8e/Zodiac_blog_2100x147.jpg[/img]
sauce:[url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zodiac_Killer[/url]
remember you heard it hear first folks! killing people makes them you slaves in the afterlife!
Reminds me of Jack the Ripper. Expect more crazy.
[QUOTE=ruffles;26760393]Reminds me of Jack the Ripper. Except more crazy.[/QUOTE]
fixed but yeah i see the similarity in a way. its a very interesting story to tell to people when your all bored on a car journey or something...
My hero.
Yeah this is pretty local to me to just live around 1 hour away from San Fransico. They made a movie about it also, never did see it.
[QUOTE=ruffles;26760669]Yeah this is pretty local to me to just live around 1 hour away from San Fransico. They made a movie about it also, never did see it.[/QUOTE]
can you remember the name?
[QUOTE=madnath619;26760837]can you remember the name?[/QUOTE]
Zodiac :v:
(I'm serious, the movie is called zodiac)
My favorite killer was John Wayne Gacy, the Clown Killer.
[QUOTE=yuki;26761567]Zodiac :v:
(I'm serious, the movie is called zodiac)
My favorite killer was John Wayne Gacy, the Clown Killer.[/QUOTE]
You have a favorite killer?
The fuck is wrong with you?
[QUOTE=Jonathan94;26762310]You have a favorite killer?
The fuck is wrong with you?[/QUOTE]
Yeah, why can't he only have a favorite rapist?
Murderers are fucked up.
[QUOTE=Jonathan94;26762310]You have a favorite killer?
The fuck is wrong with you?[/QUOTE]
He probably means the most interesting to him
i think we should all team up to decipher the letters! imagine what would happen if we found put who it was?
Pretty intresting, and spooky at the same time.
Pretty intense, but Ted Bundy was worse.
[quote]remember you heard it hear first folks! killing people makes them you slaves in the afterlife![/quote]
Makes sense to me.
That title has a V1 next to it, does that mean this is a mega thread? In which case we should be posting "weird and wonderful" things?
One of the most interesting serial killers.
I'm assuming this is a "weird and wonderful" megathread due to the version 1, so I'm gonna post something:
[img]http://img.thesun.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00353/SNN2818B_540_353646a.jpg[/img]
That white stuff is froth made out of sand and dead sea animals churned up in the ocean that washed ashore in New South Wales in Australia in August 2007.
meh the original idea was that every month or so i would post some weird or wonderful thing and make the new thread and for easy searches just put a v2 v3 ect...but hell just post stuff like what macdoo posted
[editline]18th December 2010[/editline]
-snip-
OP doesn't like sharing!
[QUOTE]In 2009, Deborah Perez claimed that her father, Guy Ward Hendrickson, was the Zodiac. However, Perez also allegedly previously claimed that she was the illegitimate daughter of John F. Kennedy, so her claim that her father was the Zodiac is no longer considered to be very credible. [/QUOTE]
"Weird and Wonderful" is in the song "Bennie and the Jets" by Elton John.
"Oh but they're weird and they're wonderful, oh Bennie she's really keen..."
[QUOTE=macdoo999;26776676]I'm assuming this is a "weird and wonderful" megathread due to the version 1, so I'm gonna post something:
[img_thumb]http://img.thesun.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00353/SNN2818B_540_353646a.jpg[/img_thumb]
That white stuff is froth made out of sand and dead sea animals churned up in the ocean that washed ashore in New South Wales in Australia in August 2007.[/QUOTE]
"Oh, look, people playing in the snow!"
*reads*
":gonk:"
I actually find it really interesting to read about serial killers, especially the mysterious ones.
[url]http://oranchak.com/zodiac/webtoy/[/url]
Lets do it.
I really liked the movie thou. John Wayne Gacy is one of my favorites. Partially because of the song.
[QUOTE=Valdor;26779038]OP doesn't like sharing![/QUOTE]
what?
[editline]19th December 2010[/editline]
[QUOTE=RELAXiN;26783373][url]http://oranchak.com/zodiac/webtoy/[/url]
Lets do it.
I really liked the movie thou. John Wayne Gacy is one of my favorites. Partially because of the song.[/QUOTE]
thanks for the link....now lets get to it!
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